With the results of Q1 left in the dust of last week, we're already reworking new sales plans for this quarter, hiring and changing a few new team members and taking apart, piece by piece, those perfectly planned lead generation tactics conceived in the dark winter of last January. Some worked, many did not, but blogs and video continue to be clear winners. Certainly, social, but so much of it falls under the classification of "It depends..."
Tags: Sales Best Practices, Tufts marketing projects, Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, 2023 Business Planning, 2023 Marketing Plans
We seem to waste a lot of time worrying, writing and talking about the practices of not getting enough sleep!
Someone even named Friday, March 17th, as World Sleep Day, without even considering the conflict with the much more important St. Patrick's Day, which, of course, has zero to do with sleep.
According to a study by the American College of Cardiology, up to 8% of deaths from any cause could be attributed to "poor sleep patterns", while those with healthier sleep habits are less likely to die prematurely. Data from Statista shows that in the US, 39% of respondents said they had suffered from a sleep disorder (problems falling asleep or staying asleep) in the 12 months prior to the survey. To me, vague phrases of "could be attributed", "less likely" and "problems falling asleep" seem to underscore the question of whether the lack of sleep is a real issue, or has this discussion just crept into being a filler when there isn't enough real news to report.
Tags: Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, 2023 Business Planning, 2023 Sales Planning, 2023 Marketing Plans
Teaching in my Science of Sales course last Thursday afternoon, only hours before the official start of Spring Break was in a word, "interesting", but with the help of visiting instructor and prior student, Erica Veino, senior Account Exec at BitSight, we worked through the fundamentals of her sales process. For me, nothing is better than bringing back to Tufts alums from my courses who are now experienced sales professionals to teach exacting details in terms of process steps, sales tools, and sales models. The mastery of those details experienced the prior week from alums Frank Yandrisevits and Shannon du Pont transitioned concepts into the practicality of how to model, train, manage and compensate salespeople.
Tags: Sales Best Practices, finding sales jobs, Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, 2023 Business Planning, 2023 Sales Planning, 2023 Marketing Plans
I first heard the word "entrepreneurship" hanging out for years in the packed seats at MIT's Enterprise Forum every 2nd Wednesday in Room 10/250. At the time, I was running a division of a large corporation and had zero idea of what an entrepreneur really did, or why they did it even though I grew up in a family of multi-generations of parents and GFs and GGFs who did exactly that. We just never used that word, "entrepreneur"
Tags: Derby Entrepreneurship Center@Tufts, Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, 2023 Business Planning, 2023 Sales Planning, 2023 Marketing Plans
With the snow now coming down heavily and with my birthday coming up next week, I am not going to recount the wicked storms I've been through.
Tags: Sales Optimization, Sales Best Practices, Sales Management Best Practices, how to close sales, entrepreneurshipfortherestofus, Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, 2023 Business Planning, 2023 Sales Planning, 2023 Marketing Plans
Fingers in the dirt
Tags: Sales Best Practices, Sales Hiring Perfectly, Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, 2023 Business Planning, 2023 Sales Planning, 2023 Marketing Plans, Derby Entrepreneurship Center
Although not the best snowboarding season, this winta' has been easy on the shoveling, my fuel bills and other than last weekend's frozen pipes (-33.1 F ambient at the top of Stratton) in the VT house, it's been a relatively smooth kickoff for the new year.
Tags: Sales Best Practices, best sales practices;, 2022businessplansuccess, Teaching at Tufts University, Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, 2023 Marketing Plans
Yesterday on Groundhog Day, it seems that Punxsutawney Phil declared six more weeks of winter. Certainly, as I sit here in Vermont this AM with the temp at 5 at 8:00 with a forecasted -25 ambient tonight, winta' like Phil is going to stick around for a while. On balance however, this has been a very mild winter, and although I'm looking out at 18" of snow in front of my office window, when I left Tufts yesterday, there's no sign of any snow in Boston.
Tags: Sales Management Best Practices, Tufts Marketing, Teaching at Tufts University, Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, 2023 Business Planning, 2023 Sales Planning, 2023 Marketing Plans
There's a superb classic blues song sung by R&B greats, Ray Charles, Albert King, Stevie Ray Vaughn and my personal favorite Joe Bonamassa, about luck...or in this case...bad luck.
On Friday the 13th, I thought that it was appropriate to kick off today as we enter the season of 2023 sales and business planning meetings with a couple of thoughts about luck.
Bottom line: Never plan on luck, optimism or even best efforts! What will happen, will happen only as a result of you and your team's personal involvement and rigid commitment to a planning process this year.
Tags: business plans, business planning meetings, Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, 2023 Business Planning
After graduating from BC, I went into the Peace Corps, and when I came back to the States, with little else than a degree in English and Biology, I was lucky enough to land a job at a large medtech corporation that was hiring interns based on attributes rather than skills and experience.
Very quickly, I and a group of other rookies hired at the same time for a specific new product, were pushed into an intensive, week-long management training session simply on "planning".
Tags: Sales Best Practices, Sales Management Best Practices, Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, 2023 Business Planning, 2023 Sales Planning, 2023 Marketing Plans
